The bug seems to be apparent when you set the end point at Duncan & Diamond Heights Blvd and the start point directly north along Clipper.

This route seems to maybe save 1 ft of climbing but goes up a 23% grade.

https://flattensf.com/#t~-122.43968~37.74865~-122.44028~37.7...

Half a block up the street it takes the sensible route with only a 13% grade. (Between the two different starting points is 41ft of climbing.)

https://flattensf.com/#t~-122.44087~37.74864~-122.44028~37.7...

I've checked out a few bike mapping apps recently and one feature I found absolutely invaluable was grade indications like http://hillmapper.com (which unfortunately seems unmaintained.)

Google Maps elevation diagrams comparing the various selected routes are nice but they do not do a good job of highlighting extreme grades. I feel like you actually want to graph the change in elevation rather than the elevation itself.

Using a route I cycled the other day (near Mission Bernal Safeway to near Diamond Heights Safeway). I think the routing may overweight bike lanes too much. For instance it will go four blocks by shared street and bike lane to avoid the two blocks on Clipper between Sanchez and Castro which are not a bike lane.

On my heavy cargo e-bike I've found there is quite a non-linear difference as the grade increases. 12% and I'll work a bit but be fine. 22% (the route Google Maps sent me...) and I'll all but collapse after a block.

https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/tobacco/data_statistics/...

https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/index.html

While the average salary decreases in this scenario it is entirely down to composition effects and does not necessarily mean anyone gets poorer.

Everyone existing employee's wages stay the same. The new immigrant paid less than the previous average but more than they were being paid in the country they moved from.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjq45vw3n4go

In fairness it probably works ok for homes insulated to a much higher standard than most British ones.

Looking at population density if you draw a 50km radius in the Netherlands you get about 8m people. This covers lots of small cities etc. In the US you get maybe 5m in a contiguous city like Phoenix (which fills the circle) or the Bay Area. (LA is more dense and you might get 10m.)

Transit works much better in the Netherlands and much of Europe because those homes and job centres are not as evenly spaced as they are in most American cities since they developed more around public transport existing. S the effective density experienced is much higher.

Dan has actually criticised a similar situation in the UK where child benefit is clawed back from higher earners.

> If I was a Tory Chancellor, I wouldn’t abolish inheritance tax. I’d fix the ridiculous marginal rates that mean there are hundreds of thousands of 30-somethings paying more than 70% tax on every additional £ they earn.

https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/09/24/70percent/

It’s reasonable to question the balance between how much taxation should be born by higher income pensioners (who likely own their home outright) vs working age people at the same level of income (who additionally pay social security tax). Maybe it would make more sense to roll social security into the tax system and raise pension payments so lower income pensioners don’t lose out.

Presumably the optimal strategy if you have retirement income within the range where you face a 15% clawback might be to withdraw extra income one year so that you can avoid the clawback the following year, since the higher marginal tax rate would be less than the clawback saved.

Even if it were practical though, how would you deal with those left destitute because of poor timing (retiring just after a market crash) or who just made poor investment decisions?

The downside of means testing pension payments is that it acts as a disincentive to discretionary pension saving.

The previous UK system (pre-2009) was an extreme example of this where those without additional pension savings got topped up with pension credit (GIS equivalent) that was clawed back at 100%. They ended up raising the state pension (OAS equivalent) to that level so those with a full contribution history are no longer eligible for pension credit (12,548 GBP = 23,416 CAD).

The OAS clawback rate is only 15% which seems more like a tax on pensioners - reasonable given they no longer make social security contributions though maybe the 50% GIS clawback would disincentivise workplace tax-deferred pension saving for those affected.

Isn't the reserve chute the Old Age Security pension along with the Guaranteed Income Supplement?

Assuming a single person with no other income, they would add $11,378 to the maximum CPP payout of $18,092 for a total of $29,470 or $14,918 to the average CPP payout of $11,000 for at total of $25,918. (Unlike the CPP, OAS is clawed back if you have other income over a certain amount.)

Retiring at 70 would raise the maximum CPP to $25,690 and OAS to $12,272 for a total of $37,962.

https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/publicpensions/ol...

Not a huge amount but substantially more. Renters also seem eligible for other help at these income levels which might amount to $5,000 per year in BC.

https://ageplacehub.ca/blog/affordable-senior-housing-canada...

(I am not Canadian but did try and look into pensions when I thought about moving there.)

It will depend on the area. Where I am in San Francisco we have articulated buses designed for 100+ people running every few minutes above BART. (We probably need more BART stations.) There’s simply not enough road space for smaller buses (let alone cars) to carry commuter traffic downtown.

(I’ve never worked downtown though so always drove to work in desolate Silicon Valley office parks.)

Even in my smaller UK home city (250k people) you need double decker 70+ capacity buses running every 15 minutes on two routes from city centre to university to handle demand because the jobs are not so distributed.

A typical jaguar Waymo usually carries up to 4 people (usually just one), weighs 2.1 tonnes and is 5.2m long.

So the double decker bus should be more environmentally efficient with maybe 5 passengers making independent journeys, though operational costs for paying a driver probably make the Waymo more financially efficient in that situation.

I suspect robotaxis will become very important in suburban areas with distributed jobs where buses don’t work well. In busy cities there simply isn’t the roadspace to replace buses with robotaxis (or any other form of car) for commuting.

San Francisco is at a southern European latitude. It’s a lot worse in the tropics.

I thought we basically had 110-130V North American voltage and 220-240V Euro and others voltage as the actual voltage you get from the grid varies within a range.